


Never give up.

by MariahJade2



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Hand of Thrawn Duology - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Mush, Romance, references suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 13:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15950111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariahJade2/pseuds/MariahJade2
Summary: On the way home from Nirauan, Luke and Mara get to talk and spend some romantic time together after his proposal.   They also discuss something she sees in his memories





	Never give up.

**Author's Note:**

> Many years ago I started several stories but never finished them. It felt wrong to let them sit on my hard drive for so many years, and the new films made me sad and got me missing my old characters. So, I decided to go back and finish them. This is one. It is what it is, so forgive the mistakes and hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Never give up.  
On the way home from Nirauan. 

Star Lines blurred and they were in hyperspace heading back to a new life. Light stretched out into infinity in the viewport, taking them through a path that was not quite time or space, but something else. Luke was quiet as he sat in the co-pilots chair, his mind lost in thought, his fingers casually entwined with Mara’s. He had up until this point, very little time to process everything they had been though and said to each other in the cave on Nirauan. He’d let himself open and bare to her and so had she to him, and there was no going back now. Their force bond was there, as if it should always have been a part of him, as if every missing piece of his soul was now whole. So many things had been exchanged, so much hurt, and pain, neglect and misunderstanding. So many unspoken feelings revealed, of respect and friendship and love. He turned and looked over at the woman next to him. Mara, his beloved. Even after all his years of holding inside what they meant or could mean to each other, she loved him, had cared more than he had ever imagined. She turned to him and smiled. A new delight to him seeing a genuine smile of pure happiness on her beautiful face. Oh, he had seen her laugh before, but this was different. Gone was the edge, gone was the sense of holding back that was usually hinting at the corners of her mouth, just a smile that lit up her whole face and he understood that this smile, this gaze was reserved only for him. A slight squeeze of his hand shook him out of his thoughts as she withdrew her fingers to undo the crash webbing and Luke followed suit. 

They both stood, eyes meeting and without a word they turned and slipped easily into an embrace, their lips touching, softly at first, his, gently tracing across her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, then returning to her lips, slowly increasing in pressure as they reveled in this new sensation of mutual attraction and need for each other. His hands caressed her back, entwining in her soft hair, pulling her closer. The feel of her arms holding him, her touch as she moved her hands up and down his back and played with his hair was better than anything he had dreamed in his unguarded thoughts about her over the years. He had no idea how long they stood like that, but eventually they pulled back a little and leaned their foreheads together with a contented sigh.  
“I love you” Did he say it or did she? Both could be true as the words floated around in his head in both voices as her feelings echoed his.  
He didn’t want to move just yet and pulled her closer, tightening his grip as his head rested on her shoulder causing her to do the same. They were alive to live this moment, to be together and Luke just wanted to savor it for he knew so very well how it might have been different. That death could have taken them both and robbed them of happiness and the Galaxy of a chance at peace. The thought of life without her now almost too much to bear. 

“But that didn’t happen Luke, you saved us and that’s everything.” Her voice so soft and beautiful in his mind was like a balm to his soul. He knew he was tired and not shielding and yet this unaccustomed freedom he had to just feel things around Mara was still new and raw, and a bit overwhelming, yet something he now relished.  
“I know.” “Let’s see what we can find to eat besides rations” , he said distracting himself from the thoughts his mind was replaying of their near death experience in the cave. Unbidden, he felt moisture try to pool into his eyes and he quickly suppressed it. He could see her brow furrow a little as she noticed, but said nothing.  
He rifled through some of the compartments in the food prep corner and picked out a few crackers and some protein spread and water as Mara came over and sat down in the small seating area that had a pull down table. They ate slowly enjoying the chance to just do nothing except talk through what they should tell Leia and Karrde. 

 

His energy somewhat improved, it came as a bit of a surprise when pain surged through his muscles and Luke winced as he moved to stand up. Mara was already up and busy exploring what else the ship had, hoping for caf of some sort but found nothing. The act of sitting still too long made his limbs stiffen up in response to the bruising of his muscles from their struggle to survive in the cave. Cuts and scrapes he’d received from moving through the water and bouncing off the walls, now made their presence known underneath his damp clothing. Before he could do anything, Mara came up behind him and laced her arms underneath his from behind and started to remove his tunic. He could feel the soft touch of her breath along his back and shoulder as she worked at getting the fabric open, pausing now and then to place a kiss along his neck.  
“Let’s see how much damage you did to yourself. Hopefully there is a med kit on this thing, if not then we are back to healing trances,” her voice saying words so familiar but now layered with a softness and a hint of heat and desire underneath it all. He could feel feather light kisses across his now bare shoulder and moaned, as his body reacted to her touch with a smoldering fire slowly creeping into his loins.  
He felt suddenly bereft as she walked away to retrieve the med kit, but her touch soon returned as Mara deftly wiped off the blood from any scrapes off his back and applied the small bacta patches. She turned him around and again gently took care of his face and chest, occasionally pausing to kiss each spot she ministered to, sending shivers down his spine, ending with her soft lips meeting his in another thrilling embrace. She tilted her head and he kissed her harder, his arms pulling her in.  
“Mmmmm that’s nice.” Mara said a bit breathlessly after they pulled back. “Why have I not done this with you years ago? Why did you never offer me Jedi kissing lessons instead of boring rock lifting? I might have stayed on that steaming jungle with you sooner.” The glint of humor and teasing in her eyes filled Luke up with both regret and the urge to laugh at the same time. He did laugh in fact and it felt good.  
“It’s something I’m now going to regret for the rest of my life, but perhaps I’ve got a few other lessons we could still work on.” And his lusty gaze and husky voice told her exactly what lessons he had in mind. She blushed and he loved it right down to his very toes.  
“Your turn,” he said suddenly and had Mara switch places as he made her sit so he could tend to her injuries too. Her hair was a mess of a knot pulled up high on her head and he indulged himself with something he always wanted to do. Finding a brush he undid her hastily made bun and let her long red- gold hair down. As he started to brush, he noticed small bits of cave gravel come out with the bristles, wincing at the thought of her head hitting the rock walls as they had been pulled through the water. He started at the bottom slowly working through the knots until he had brushed them all out along with the debris. Her hair was always beautiful to him, and despite being a bit worse for the cave, under his fingers it felt soft and glorious and he could imagine what it would feel like against his bare chest. Through the bond he felt her tease him with images of just that in her imagination and he groaned.  
“There, would you like me to pull it up again or should I let you do it?” His voice cracked a bit still picturing the image she had sent him. 

“I’ll do it. It still needs a wash but this will be good for now.” Her hands made quick work of a top knot. “Thank you. I’ve never had, well never someone that cared,” and her voice trailed off without finishing the sentence.  
“You do now, Mara.”  
He kissed her newly bared neck just below her ear, and moved around to her front, pulling the zipper on her torn flight suit down to her waist. Underneath she wore just a green tank top, but that color could not compare to the shades of green he could see in her eyes as he looked into them gauging how she felt about his actions. She stood up suddenly and pushed the suit the rest of the way down and tossed it over one of the chairs, leaving her only in shorts and a tank and she smiled with a shrug.  
“It needs to dry off fully anyway,” she said in response to his surprised and admiring stare.  
He began searching for cuts and bruises finding a small one on her forehead that he cleaned but it was small enough to heal on its own, so he moved to her arms where he applied one or two patches and liquid bacta for the smaller cuts. He watched her eyes close in pleasure as he slowly stroked his fingers up and down each arm as he moved from one to the other, and kissed each place he cleaned, returning the gesture she had done for him and adding a bit of force enhanced pain suppression. Luke then looked at her legs and instantly noticed the contrast between the soft pale skin on her shapely toned calves and thighs and the dark blue bruising, caked red with blood where she must have scraped the rocks in the tunnel. He flinched slightly at the thought, then gently lifted each leg one at a time, while he sat on the floor in front of her, wiping away the dirt and blood so he could apply the first aid.  
Gods she was beautiful even injured and dirty, her legs were bringing to mind all sorts of thoughts about being tangled up in them, and he absently stroked along her thigh as he finished taking care of the last cut on her upper left leg. He looked up to see her smiling and staring intently at him and all the blood felt like it drained out of his head at the emotions she was projecting towards him. Desire, gratitude, exhaustion, surprise, pleasure, need and love filled him through the bond. He found it difficult to control his need to just grab her now and make love to her right there on the floor, but there were still possible injuries to her torso to inspect.  
He brought himself to a kneeling position between her legs and gently lifted her top exposing her stomach, looking for any injury and found nothing there but creamy pale skin and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning in to place a gentle kiss just to the right of her navel and mumbled that everything looked perfect, eliciting a small giggle from her. He had no idea that Mara could or would ever giggle and this made him feel an unexpected rush of pure joy. Was this another thing she would show only to him now? So many things to still learn about her, and he wanted to know them all and he was going to get that chance.  
He suddenly felt her hands sliding through his hair, shivering at the feel of her nails grazing softly along his head as he placed one more kiss on her stomach. She ran her fingers down his shoulders and then grabbed his hands pulling him up so their lips could join again, exploring with their tongues lightly.  
“Mara” he moaned in response. It felt like they stayed that way forever yet in real time it was over quickly when he forced himself to stop to inspect her shoulder before he lost all control. She stood pulling him up with her. Before he could pull aside the tank straps she simply pulled her top over her head leaving nothing on but her bra and the shorts. An almost impish grin crossed her face, and he knew she could feel all of his reactions as if she wanted to see every possible nuance written on his face, as if she needed to see what effects she had on him. Well it was pretty obvious to him looking down at himself and back up.  
“You enjoy making things difficult for me don’t you?” he teased.  
“Always. That’s one reason why I agreed to marry you.”  
“And the other reasons?”  
A tiny cloud passed over her features but disappeared when she spoke.  
“Because I’ve wasted too many years holding my feelings inside and not letting you or even myself understand how much I cared, that I loved you.”  
The look on her face made his knees feel weak, standing there looking so beautiful and desirable and she wanted him, wanted to be with him forever.  
He realized he was supposed to be checking her shoulder injury but instead he was just staring at her breasts all encased in a practical yet still undeniably enticing black bra. It was the way they looked so perfectly made to fill his hands if he only reached out and… Stop, injury first. Control, control he tried to tell himself.  
He could feel her amusement, tinged with a little shyness of her own underneath his scrutiny, and he could almost feel the blush in her cheeks rising as if it was his own. The blast she had taken to her shoulder looked nearly fully healed yet this thought flashed him back to his near panic when it happened at the thought of losing her. He grazed it softly and reached into the force to sooth any remaining adhesions that might be forming. Her back seemed to be mostly free save for some small bruising, and he couldn’t help but steal a glance down at her enticing mounds over her shoulder. So beautiful. He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind kissing along the side of her cheek and once again thanked the stars and the universe and the force for being alive. The feel of his bare chest against her mostly bare back filling him up with hot desire.  
She turned around in his arms in response and met his desire with an equal amount of her own, their emotions flowing back and forth between them as she wrapped herself into his embrace with a searing kiss. The only thing that stopped them from going further was the stupid Chiss ship and it’s decidedly uncomfortable little bunk and the equally hard floor and while the temperature was tolerable it was not really all that warm. He wanted their first time to be right, not awkward, certainly better than this. Maybe the universe was not as kind to him as he had just thought.  
She must have heard that because she started to laugh, yet it also contained frustration at their thwarted desires.  
“It won’t be too long before we get to Karrde’s base, I suppose we can hold on till then though it’s so hard with you looking at me with those big, blue farmboy eyes like that.”  
“You like my eyes?”  
“Yes. And you must know they get to me, because you use them on me all the time, and have been for years. In fact, I think they are the main way you wormed your way into my head without me even realizing.” Once again he felt like he’d just learned something new and wonderful about her and to have her share this was like a gift.  
She gave him a beautiful smile and said wistfully. “They remind me of oceans and that little lagoon on Yavin that I used to sneak off to swim in when I couldn’t take the sticky jungle air there.”  
“I’ll have to remember this next time you threaten to kill me.”  
She laughed. “I’ve got better things in mind for you.”  
She picked up his artificial hand and placed light little kisses along his knuckles, his wrist and paused to look at the place where artificial skin met flesh as she traced along the barely visible line. Luke tried to cover it with his other hand and a sudden wave of shame, melancholy and self recrimination ran through him.  
“Luke Skywalker that’s the second or third time I’ve felt something from you since we left. There is something under there you won’t let come to the surface and I’m not allowing that anymore. What’s bothering you? You don’t think I care about this being artificial do you?”  
“No, no it’s not that. It’s just, an old memory, old choices. Choices that might have made us never meet, and Force, I’m just so glad we did and you are here.”  
“You mean at Bespin? But you’ve already passed those tests long ago.”  
He shifted sideways a bit and looked away, his feelings of guilt he realized had never fully left. “You don’t understand. Bespin. When I was fighting Vader and I realized I was losing and backed into an impossible spot. Afterward, everyone assumed I was just trying to escape him, and when I landed on the weather sensors under Cloud city that I had called out to Leia so I could survive. That’s not exactly what happened. He let her see his memories as he continued to speak. When he told me... I didn’t want to live, I wanted to die because I could feel it was true. Everyone I trusted had lied to me, my whole life was a lie. I finally understood why my Uncle treated me the way he did, why they never answered questions. He was afraid. How could anyone see me as anything but sith spawn, with revulsion, pity, fear. When Vader cut my hand and destroyed my life, I stepped off to kill myself and perhaps to hurt him back, it was unbearable to know that the only person that told me the truth was my kriffing sith of a father. I didn’t expect the vents to pull me in and when I called out to Leia, I didn’t really believe she would hear. I cried out to Ben knowing he wouldn’t answer because I was just crying. Perhaps I still had a tiny bit of self preservation that let me have one tiny spark of hope, but mostly I was just calling out goodbye.”  
“If I had succeeded in my choice,” and his voice broke, “ you would still be the Emperors hand, Han would be a wall decoration in Jabbas palace, Leia and Chewie would probably be dead, my father and the Emperor would still control the galaxy and who knows if the rebellion could last for long. There would be no Jedi to fight them. How many millions would continue to suffer? In that moment, I thought only of myself, my own pain, how betrayed I felt, how my very identity was gone and I didn’t know who I was, and I just wanted it to stop.”

He could feel Mara in his mind parsing through each moment like she was studying each frame of a holovid. Her sorrow at his pain was palpable, but there was something else too, recognition, empathy, love, disagreement?  
“I’m sorry.” She cupped his face and kissed him sending him waves of comfort and love over their bond. “Luke you had just been traumatized, your hand cut off, your body was wracked with pain physically and mentally. That was too much responsibility to shoulder then, and you shouldn’t hold guilt for it, they should have told you, but maybe there is something else you are not seeing.”  
“Mara, I’ve lived with this for years. I don’t think I’m forgetting anything. I’ve come to terms with it, and in the end things worked out, but sometimes, like now, it comes flooding back when I think what would have happened to you, to everyone. ”  
“But I’m here and alive and I love you and you did forget something. You even told Vader what you knew later on Endor in the walkway. Don’t you see? You reminded him that he couldn’t destroy you. How did you know that for sure?  
“He tried to recruit me, of course he wanted me alive.”  
“Yes, but that’s not all of it or you would have never tried to save him. You told him you could feel the good in him, that he had not driven it out of his soul all the way. When did you know that Luke? It didn’t just happen when you gave yourself up to him, because you said the same thing to Leia before you met him.”  
“I... I just knew.” He brow furrowed as if he’d been looking at something all along but only now was seeing it fully beyond his old choice and failure.  
“That’s right and I think I know how. You fell off the gangway but not straight, now why is that? Wind, the debris extractors? Perhaps some, but not enough to keep your body from smashing into the bottom in a million pieces. The only way you would have made it to the vent you ended up in was if something guided you there, slowed your decent. A push from the Force.”  
Luke’s eyes opened wider as he stared into her beautiful green eyes. Had he been in so much pain that he didn’t notice, or did he and denied it because of the shock and horror of the truth, or was it that he wasn’t ready till later to accept it? Was his later conviction that something of his real father was still there not just from his meditation’s in the force, or from hope, but from something real and tangible? Did it matter? He still chose to die rather than face it all.  
“Mara...” Her name sounded rough with emotion on his lips as he processed everything she had just said.  
“He wanted you to live because don’t you see, you were already saving him then. Are you sure you wanted to die or did you take a leap of faith subconsciously even in your pain? You needed to, to save him and me, your friends. You knew this, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see it myself. Didn’t you have faith in me the same way? You’ve forgiven him. Forgive yourself. Forgive your anger. Forgive your guilt, your shame, your despair. It’s just an old memory now and holds no more power. We are here now and nothing can take that away. ” She took his hands in hers. 

Luke let his mind take in everything she just said to him and allowed himself some forgiveness.  
“And this is why I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You see me, better than I see myself.”  
“As you do for me, my love.”  
They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time, not needing to speak, a galaxy of emotion swimming in blue and green and then her arms were wrapping around him again.  
And as he pulled her close in a breathtakingly warm, unyielding kiss, the past fell away, the universe fell into place once again, and beauty, passion, and an explosion of desire, urgency and love replaced it.  
Pilots chair?  
Pilots chair!

 

This was the lesson he burned into his soul.  
In your darkest moments, when all seems lost, in the depths of despair, when pain and anguish fill you, when you think everything is hopeless and your life has been shattered, and nothing could ever fix what was wrong. When outside forces seem impossible to overcome, When the world seems to crash around you and you feel destroyed, and you see no way out but one. Don’t give in, don’t fall, leap, reject fear, look up from the darkness, rage and fight because there is light at the end of the tunnel and there are always possibilities, and you are not alone, and there is hope and love and everything can change if you Never Give up.  
Through their bond her voice echoed in his mind. “Never ever give up”


End file.
